The sweet smell of summer

           A sample of self-seeded phlox' variety

Tall Garden Phlox has taken over the front beds of my house and are starting to make inroads into the other areas of my yard as well.  For years I neglected deadheading the phlox I inherited from the previous owners, and since they aren't very fussy about where they will grow, they now outnumber any of the other perennials in my yard (not including the weeds, of course!)

Now I religiously deadhead them but I do it with regret because phlox are really into "loving thy neighbor" and over the years my palette of phlox blooms went from a medium purple to a wild mix of lavender blue, white, white/pink, pink, bright pink, a range of heights, and slightly different flower shapes and sizes.  All because I added a 'David,' 'Red Riding Hood', and several 'Laura' phlox after I found out how fragrant phlox are.  Now I look forward to seeing what any new phlox plant will look like when it blooms.

And the fragrance once they do bloom is lovely!  I really love walking out my front door and having that vanilla wall of smell envelope me.  Nice!

The other thing I love about phlox is that the butterflies, sphinx moths and hummingbirds love them too.  I can sit and watch all the pretty fluttery critters out there working over the flowers right outside my picture window.

What I don't love is the powdery mildew that goes along with phlox, but we had pretty consistent rain here this summer so the plants didn't really get water-stressed thus I didn't see much mildew. 'David' is my latest blooming phlox so I will get to enjoy the show well into mid-September. Yay!

All of these white phlox are self-seeded 

Red Riding Hood is one of 3 cultivars I actually planted-it got bad reviews in the Chicago Botanic Garden trials for poor mildew resistance but I've never had a problem in my yard with this one. (Knock on wood)

Creature Feature

Happy summertime to you all!  It's been hot and dry for a while now so I was glad to see some rain this morning.  Just wish it had waited until I had taken our tent down and brought in the bedding we had drying out on our deck (we had been camping over the weekend and as usual it rained, leaving me with a big wet mess to deal with when we got home.) 

While camping, we got the chance to care for a baby cedar waxwing that the storm had knocked out of its tree.  We had it just long enough to warm and dry it off and feed it some grape bits before we got it back to its tree.  It was a cute little bugger, full of personality.  Made me think of other critters I've run across over the years in my garden.  The ones that made an impression on me or my family. 

My previous garden was an acre of grass in full sun and sandy soil with only a couple of trees.  Over the years I added a wide assortment of perennials, trees and shrubs, including a bit of prairie.  It wasn't long before we had lots of critters visiting the garden. 

There was a hummingbird who thought he was the king of everything and would harass anything that got close to his favorite plants.  There was the little gray-green tree frog who would cling to our windows at night to eat moths attracted to our lighted interior.  One time we accidentally brought him inside on the back of a chair cushion.  It caused quite the commotion when it panicked and started jumping on us instead of trying to get away, which made us scream and jump in panic!  We finally calmed down enough to get him safely back outside but it was all my kids could talk about for days. 

There were the sandhill cranes that came every year; they are SO scary up close.  You don't realize how big they are and how sharp their beaks look until you are face-to-face with them. 

There were so many animals and birds and bugs, but it was a couple of our snake residents that really stuck out.  I'm not into snakes.  They freak me out, especially when you are weeding under a large hosta or shrub and a snake zips out from the plant you have your hand under.  That'll make anyone jump!

Still, I figure that it meant I had a healthy garden going if snakes were there and so I decided to leave any snake found to go about its business in peace.  There was one snake that really made me laugh.  The kids and I found a eeny-weeny green grass snake in our garage one day.  Oh, how it hissed at us as we tried to scoop it up with a dustpan to put it back outside.  It had the tiniest little head with the tiniest little mouth and an itty-bitty hiss.  It was trying so hard to look mean and fierce!  Adorable! 

I will never know if it was the same one but a couple of years later I was weeding among my daylilies and I saw an adult grass snake.  It was staying very still but when it realized I saw it, it started gently waving its head so it would look like a blade of grass blowing in the wind.  I laughed so hard! It really did have the movement of wind-blown grass down perfect!  I decided to take a break from weeding and went inside for a cup of chai.  That would give the snake time to find a better hiding spot.

I haven't seen any snakes in my new garden but we have at least one tree frog who likes to sit on our window at night to catch a snack.  And the first sound I heard when we got home from camping was the sound of cedar waxwings in our trees out front.  I hope I can provide a safe haven for the critters that live here (but they better not eat my plants down to the ground!  Bambi and Thumper, I'm talking to you!)